After the Key Bridge fell, María del Carmen Castellón Luna first had to deal with the shock and grief of losing her husband, Miguel, who was working on the bridge’s span that night.

Then she had to deal with the bureaucracy.

As a noncitizen, the widow — who goes by Carmen — was not allowed under Maryland law to serve as a personal representative for her husband’s estate. That meant she needed extra legal help to handle his affairs and distribute his assets, including the house the couple bought together.

Now, Carmen is advocating to change Maryland’s law and allow noncitizens to serve as personal representatives when a loved one dies.

“This is an injustice that can easily be remedied by the power of this legislative body,” she told the House of Delegates Judiciary Committee last week, speaking through an interpreter. “The power that you have to declare any person, regardless of their immigration status, to be able to be the personal representative of their loved one’s estate.”

Miguel Angel Luna Gonzales was one of the six members of a construction crew who were killed when a container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26 and sent the span tumbling into the Patapsco River.

During her emotional testimony, Carmen said that rebuilding her life and organizing her finances after her husband’s death was difficult enough without an extra bureaucratic obstacle.

“I hope that we don’t have to ever again have another family go through what my family has had to go through due to our immigration status during this very difficult tragedy,” she said.

Like many states, Maryland places a few restrictions on who can manage an estate. Personal representatives must be older than 18, mentally competent, and cannot have been convicted of a serious crime that reflects poorly on their trustworthiness, like fraud. Those rules are common.

Many states also impose restrictions on out-of-state residents handling estates to ensure that personal representatives are easily accessible to the court and keep the probate process moving smoothly. Maryland law requires out-of-state residents to name someone who lives in the state who can receive legal communications, for example, a rule that would remain in place under bill being considered by lawmakers.

But Maryland is alone among neighboring states in preventing noncitizens from serving as personal representatives, said Byron E. Macfarlane, the register of wills for Howard County. He testified in favor of the legislation.

The restriction comes up consistently, he said, and can push surviving relatives to hire an attorney to serve as personal representative for an estate. That’s cost-prohibitive for some families, Macfarlane said.

“I worry that this barrier to access to our system may force people to dispose of those assets outside of the normal process,” he told lawmakers.

The bill originally would have required registers of wills to provide an alternative identity verification process for anyone without a state-issued ID. It has since been amended to simply repeal the portion of Maryland law that prohibits noncitizens from serving as personal representatives. No one has opposed the bill to date.

Macfarlane told lawmakers that registers of wills use a variety of tools to ensure they’re dealing with the right people and root out attempted fraud, including notarized affidavits and shared financial documents.

The bill’s sponsor is Del. Teresa Woorman, a Montgomery County Democrat who said she grew up as an undocumented immigrant in Maryland.

“This is the kind of stuff that I got into office to do,” said Woorman, who joined the House of Delegates in August. She’s hopeful her bill will receive bipartisan support.

“At the state level, we can’t do anything about changing people’s immigration status. ... but what we can do is find different ways to make people’s lives easier,” she said.